


But the Canary Only Sings

by facetofcathy



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode Related, Gen, Wordcount: 100-1.000, metafic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-20
Updated: 2010-05-20
Packaged: 2017-10-09 15:09:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/88721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/facetofcathy/pseuds/facetofcathy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My take on one of the barely-there characters in Swan Song.</p>
            </blockquote>





	But the Canary Only Sings

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from the song, Sing For Your Supper, by Rodgers and Hart.

Lena fought her way against the wind, back bent as she pushed up the street, grit stinging her face. The rain had stopped, but the sky was still dark grey, and lightening flashed out over the lake. She almost hoped the power would go out again so she could leave work early, or better yet, not have to start at all. But the rent was still due in four days, so she didn't hope too hard.

The store on the corner was open, blue-tinged light spilling out into the gloom of an afternoon that looked like evening. She ducked inside and got a coffee, had to wait behind a line of people buying lottery tickets to pay. Sera was working the register, a thick book decorated in stripes of highlighter blue and yellow pushed off to one side. Lena's girls did that too. Viv had spent the last week studying for her exams, her hands showing pink stigmata most of the time.

The stack of newspapers by the register screamed about swine flu and 100-year floods, along with the usual sins of human imperfection. Lena left the newspaper to those with the time to give its tales the fear they demanded. She couldn't do anything about corrupt politicians or viruses or floods. She could try to make bonus this weak, and she could steal a few minutes at work to read some more of her favourite story if she were lucky.

She pushed inside her building. She called it the office sometimes, making small talk at the grocery store, or with the girls' teachers. She let people imagine whatever that word conjured up in their minds—about her job and about her. She felt like an impostor sometimes, but she'd made her choice of means to get to the end she wanted for Iris and Viv, and there was no going back now.

The weather had been so extraordinary lately—cold and damp and wind all the time—the stairwell was littered with debris and gravel that crunched under foot on the metal stairs. The place stank of wet leaves and the strange sulphur smell that had blown in on the previous day's storm. It suited the place with its peeling yellow paint and rusty metal railings.

Lena pushed open the heavy metal fire door onto a sea of grey carpet and cubicle walls. The lights shone cold and blue, and one was always flickering. The murmur of voices rose and fell in competing waves, no particular one rising above the others. The place smelled of wet shoes and burnt, bitter coffee. She sipped her own, barely better brew and decided she had time to swing by the break room. If she were lucky, Bree might have brought in something delicious to chase the shadows away.

She had. "You're an angel, Bree," Lena said and dropped into one of the mismatched chairs with a stack of double chocolate cookies still holding a ghost of their fresh-baked heat.

"I'd rather be a devil, honey, they have more fun," Bree said. Lena laughed along with her, wishing Bree _did_ have a little of the selfish devil in her.

She had her knitting out, scarlet and purple trailing over her lap. It looked luxurious, and it drew Lena's fingers to touch as much as it did her eye. "That for Mona?"

Bree gave her a look at the mild rebuke she hadn't kept from her tone. "For her graduation, which is next week, so I need to get cracking."

"You ever going to make something for yourself?"

"So, I can wear it here?" Bree laughed a little bitterly, and Lena dropped it; she knew Bree was never going to change. No point to pushing her.

"Mona coming back from Chapel Hill right after graduation?"

Bree frowned at her knitting, but didn't stop, so the question was the problem, not the yarn. Or Mona was, more like. "She's talking around the point." Bree looked up and her face showed the fondness and the exasperation that Mona always inspired. "That girl could talk rings around the devil and never say a true word. But, reading between the lines, I think she's staying on."

"She and her girl moving in together?"

"Looks like, not that her mother won't be the last to know. I just—‏it's so far away, you know?"

Lena _didn't_ know, but she was soon going to find out. "Viv had the college applications spread out on the table last night and Iris was right there, asking a million questions. Most of them about dorms and just how far away California is, and then they got into the dollars and cents, and I had to leave the room. Cranked up some silly thing on the television with lots of screaming and carrying on so I couldn't hear."

"Their father offering up any cash?"

"Now, you know that's just not in keeping with his lifestyle," Lena said sourly.

"Lifestyle? Is that what they call a deadbeat dad these days?"

"Viv would say no anyway. She wants nothing from him. Doesn't want to owe him, but Iris—"

"Ladies," Eric called from down the hall, hollering out his office door when he could walk the ten feet and use his indoor voice.

Lena rolled her eyes and caught Bree doing the same. They weren't even late yet, but he liked pulling their strings, wanted to see if he could get them running to their desks.

"I must not call my boss an asshole. I must not call my boss an asshole," Lena chanted quietly, and Bree laughed at her, but they both got up and walked, at a reasonable and sedate pace, out to their cubicles.

Lena slipped on the headset, tipped a wink to the cartoon of Boris and Natasha pinned up over the phone, and hit one of the blinking buttons.

"Darling," she cooed into the microphone, "Mistress Magda is here for you. I am going to tell you what to do now, darling, and you will obey like a good little boy, yes?"


End file.
